


Safe

by diesis



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, One Shot, Trying To Make Sense, Wishful Thinking, fix-it (sort of), post 8x04, when I still had hope this season could have a reasonable ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 08:12:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18735097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diesis/pseuds/diesis
Summary: Jaime's arrival in King's Landing.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still working on a longer fic I started before season 8 aired, but after last night's spoilers and the few scenes I could watch, I needed something to cope with it...

The cart plows through the mud, slowly. He wishes it could go faster - but he can't simply ride to the gates, so he must disguise himself in the crowd of small folk and beggars that heads to the city from the countryside, at least for these last hours of the trip. Snow turns to icy rain and to snow again over his shoulders.

The man who picked him up is a peasant from a small village near Maidenpool, going to the capital with his family. The farmer talks far too much for his liking, but he didn't seem to recognise him at all, and travels with his old mother, his sister and two little brats that maybe are his sons, maybe his nephews - either one thing or the other, not both, he thinks with a shudder. The younger woman took pity of his stump, his ragged clothes and his feigned limp, and convinced her brother to give him a ride to the city. Maybe later he might talk them into going away from King's Landing, and find shelter somewhere else. But now he must focus on his next moves when he'll reach his destination. He clutches the bundle where he hid both his sword and his golden hand, and watches the road, the patches of snow on the hills, the heavy grey clouds lingering above the valley, he watches them but doesn't see them. He wonders if he'll be able to trick the guards when they'll get to the city walls. He thinks back at the time he crossed the gates with her. He thinks back at the hint of a smile on her face, back then.

  
If he closes his eyes, he can still see it - he can count her smiles on the fingers of his remaining hand, the most beautiful are the ones that no one else could see. If he closes his eyes he can see that spot just behind her ear, the one to kiss to make her giggle like a lightsome, soft maiden - not a maiden anymore, and her softness, her gentleness is so carefully hidden under her strong shoulders and her armour that sometimes he wonders if he's the only one that really sees it - he knows for sure he's the only one that has experienced it on his own skin.

How much time does it take to learn someone else's body, to feel it so deeply that it's more familiar than your own? Once, he would have answered "years, ages, all the way from your mother's womb to the grave". Now he knows it just takes weeks. Hours, seconds maybe. The warmth of her arms around his waist is embedded in his bones now, it will be until the day he dies. A better man wouldn't have done it. A better man would have stopped his hand before knocking on her door. But, gods, he had wanted her so badly, he had loved her for so long, they had outlived the Army of the Dead and he had hoped that somehow things could just be solved by someone else, for once - and for some blissful days he had lived in this delusion, they both did. A better man wouldn't have left her heartbroken.

  
"Hey!" The farmer calls him back from his reverie. "Hey, man, is it alright?"  
He senses the tears pooling in his eyes, wipes them away with his good hand. "Nothing, dude." He weighs up the man at his side and the two quiet women in the back of the cart. Maybe they actually did not recognise him. "I was just thinking about my wife." Another lie, she is not. He would have asked her right after the battle, their shoulders still pressed against the wall of the keep under the weight of a pile of collapsed wights. He almost asked her before the battle. He would have asked her before kissing her for the first time, he should have asked immediately after - he should have dragged her in front of a septon, of a damn Weirwood tree, any god would have worked. He should have asked every morning he woke up beside her. A better man would have done it.

  
"Is she dead?" The man's mother asks, frowning. He shakes his head. "No, she isn't. She's somewhere North. Safe."

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I intended this fic to be a one-shot, but then I spent another day reading about leaks, interviews, and so on. So, if they really won't meet again after episode 4, at least give me this - and some flashbacks of their time together...

She crumples the scroll in her hand. She knows this time it would be impolite to decline. Her former lady has invited her again and again, but there was always a good reason to refuse: the pregnancy, then the child, then her father's illness. Now, her father rests in peace on the top of the sea cliff along with their ancestors, and the child has grown enough to follow her in her journey. The spring is warm and fertile, the island hasn't been too damaged by the war, she trusts her counsellors and the men and women that serve her, and her people won't mind if she leaves them for a couple of months.

She doesn't know if she can bear to go back to Winterfell, though.  
She still can feel his touch, sometimes - it's been years ago, and still, it burns like it did the first time - his weight above her, his hand in her hair, his lips lingering on her collarbone, the way he pushed himself into her core on their last night together, strongly, desperately.

She turns from the blue expanse of the ocean at her son's voice, and while the boy runs to her on the terrace, she catches a glimpse of his figure, leaning against the parapet at her side.  
She sees him quite often, actually. She knows it's just her mind playing jokes on her, but she doesn't care. The first time it happened, it was awfully painful, because for the briefest moment she did hope that - then he disappeared suddenly, leaving her again, alone and scared.   
Now she finds it almost soothing. She feels stronger under his gaze.

He wears the same clothes he had on when she last saw him, his golden hand, the stubble, his hair that had grown long. But his face is always peaceful, he smiles whenever she meets his eyes.

He never moves his lips from that smile, but he always tells her the same thing. "I love you."  
"I love you too.", she answers back, silently.  
They never said it, when they were together - even if she wonders if they ever said anything else but that, every time they spoke to each other, since - for her, since the day his own wretched sister pointed it out, for him, she doesn't know - maybe when she called him "Ser" back in Harrenhal.   
But the words never came to their mouths, not even in the heat of lovemaking. Those were words meant for court lords and ladies, for feasts and flowers, not for warriors, knights, steel.

She kneels to hug their child, as she knelt in front of him the night he knighted her. She feels she's a bit overindulgent with the little rascal, but he reminds her so much of him that sometimes she can't help being tolerant to the boy's exuberance - she's forgiven his father much more.

There's only one thing she still can't forgive him: that he concealed the truth and thus didn't let her try to save him. But when she learned what he truly meant to do, she had already found out of the child and she knew, she knew with every fibre of her being that he would never forgive her if she endangered their son - and even if she had ridden South as fast as she could, it would have been too late.  
So she grieved for him before his death, and she grieved when the news came, shortly after - no more than a blunt, formal confirmation. She mourned him in the same chamber where she had given herself to him consciously and completely, in the bed they had shared, until the day her squire came in carrying a small tray with bread, cheese, some broth and boiled carrots. "Please, my lady, eat.", the young man pleaded, discouraged. "Eat", she heard her own words echoing in her mind, eat, live, take revenge. There was no one anymore to take revenge on, his sister dead at his own hands and her allies either killed during the battles or executed immediately after. But there was someone to live for, someone growing inside her. In the name of the Mother, I charge you to defend the innocent.  
After the councils that sealed a new age of peace, she asked her lady to release her from her vow, and she went back home.

When she rises, holding the boy in her arms while he tugs at her hair and tells her something about the fencing lesson that he's just finished, she looks again at the parapet. He's gone. He'll come back. She knows he'll come back every day, till she's an old grey woman without the strength to wield her - his - sword. He'll be handsome and glowing and loving as she remembers him, he'll stay with her until the very end.

Don't leave me, she begged him that morning. Now, she knows he didn't, she knows he never will. 

**Author's Note:**

> \---  
> (English is not my first language, I hope I didn't make a mess with grammar and tenses)


End file.
